It’s time to start thinking about Valentine’s Day!  And the new “Painted With Love” Specialty DSP is just the thing to use for beautiful, richly colored cards.  It’s hard to imagine how beautiful this paper is until you have it in your hands. The rich colors and detailed designs are beautiful.  The colors are not traditional Valentine’s Day colors, but after working with this paper, I think they make wonderful, unique cards! One side has realistic designs that almost look textured such as the paper in today’s sample. The other side has designs highlighted with gold foil. For this card, I chose one of the “textured” looking papers and used the Sunshine Wishes Framelits to make the design and sentiment.  Click on the image below to learn more.

Products Used In This Card

This card was created for this weeks Global Design Challenge #GDP112, a case of a card by Designer Connie Collins.  You can see Connie’s card and the other designers and challenge entries by clicking on the icon below.

I loved Connie’s idea of using stamps to create a background or “paper” and then using a large sentiment and an embellishment to finish the design.  I had thought about using stamps from Bits & Pieces as a background for some time.  This challenge presented the perfect opportunity to give that idea a try! I simply too the baby t-rex stamp and the dots stamp and created a repeating pattern on a Whisper White yardstick.  I colored in the baby t-rex using the Old One Stampin’ Blend. I am really loving these new Stampin’ Blends!  You can learn more about them here!

Update!  I won a “Special Mention” in the challenge!  I am very excited the judges liked my baby t-rex card!

For the sentiment, I used the “Wild About You” from the set and colored in the word “Wild” using the Olive Stampin’ Blend.  Then I cut out a baby t-rex and popped it with a dimensional beside the sentiment. Believe it or not, the DSP behind the sentiment id from the Merry Little Christmas DSP! I had a scrap laying on my craft table and it was the perfect color and had a dot pattern which fit the card design. I am finding this new holiday DSP very versatile!  A few black candy dots(retired) finished off the CASE of Connie’s card.

I  had a great time creating this and hope to use a few more of the stamps from this set to create a similar look!

Products Used to Make This Card

Before stamping and then Stampin’ Up! became my thing, I was really into mixed media arts. I still love mixed media, but stamping is still my main thing.  Today’s card design has a little more os a  “mixed media” design using Vintage Leaves.  The card design was inspired by an online class I just finished.  I loved going back into my old art form of using mediums, gesso and paint to create.  But it also reminded me of why I have strayed away from that art form and now do mostly stamping with inks.  It is the simplicity and ease of  using stamps and ink with paper.

You can compare the card I did above with the samples from the class below.  I love my class pieces and had great fun making them.  But I was also inspired to see if I could do the same style of art using my Stampin’ Up! supplies.  The class was based on the monochromatic look that is so popular now.  And after creating the class projects, I immediately knew Vintage Leaves would be the stamp set to use!

The background was sponged on using Old Olive, Cajun Craze and Crushed Curry inks.  I then used the Touches of Texture set to stamp on the speckles and texture. The leaves were stamped in Chocolate Chip on Very Vanilla and then die cut.  The most fun thing was taking the Clear Faceted Gems and coloring them using the Bronze Stampin’ Blends to look like copper.

The closeup below shows how the bronze colored Faceted Gems blends with the Metallic Copper Thread.  I love all the layers and parts to the card.  It may not be practical for every card you do, but it is fun to step out of your creative comfort zone now and then and try something new!

As I said my inspiration to try a stamped card with a mixed media look was taking a class in mixed media from RG Studio 360  taught by Richard Garay, a designer and stamper whose work I have admired for many  years.

The class was an online class and surprisingly fun to do.  It was my first online class.  After signing up, I received a kit before the class that included all the supplies I needed. I had a blast using mediums, gesso and paints.  It was good to push my creativity a bit to go back to this form of art and remember how much I love it.  I had just done the Halloween book, which I blogged about on a few posts ago and  you can see HERE!  But this was creating on a very “artsy” level and it was good to work with mediums and paint again.  We did a memory book, art canvas and a card.

Some of the pages from the memory book are below.

So that was my adventure into mixed media art.  And my inspiration to try the “mixed media” look using Stampin’ Up! inks and stamps.  I think my first love is still Stampin’ Up!  The versatility of ink, stamps and paper are what won me over to stamping in the first place.  And it will keep me there! But it is nice to gain inspiration by trying other art.  After all, that’s how we develop our skills, try new things and improve our skill and creativity in our chosen medium!  I encourage everyone to step out and learn something new.  It will make your stamping hobby that much more meaningful.  Not to mention make you soooo appreciative of how wonderful, versatile and fabulous stamps and ink really are!

Stampin Up Products Used